Mom's Soul Cafe

I recently joined a gym. Before you start giving me kudos, you should know that I joined because they allow the kids to stay in the kid’s area for two hours a day. With summer coming up, that was the clincher when I was looking over the paperwork.

Downward Dog Yoga Pose

As far as I’m concerned it’s all a win-win for me, for the kids, for my health and for my summertime sanity. And since the kids just got out for the summer yesterday, I hope my new relationship with my new gym works out (literally and figuratively – pun intended).

Many mornings when I wake up and the house is still quiet, I make a cup of hot, green tea, go to my office and choose a book from my small book case. I choose the book blindly then open to a random page and read.

Where have I been? I have been out rafting in the river of life, receiving many messages of its forever changing terrain. I have been living! But I have to say, I miss, miss, miss writing. I see more clearly than ever my passions and what I hold dear. When you lose time for some-thing important, everything becomes clear, right?

Bodhi Tree

We just got back from a weekend in Florida. My mom lives there so it’s a regular destination for us.

I say, “Oh, yes you were.” Then I apologized to the people walking as the ball whizzed past their heads.

And this incident had me thinking long after it was over. I gave my son advice that I myself should listen to more often. I have read many books on staying in the present moment. And I think I do an OK job at being in the here and now.

But I also think too much about the past and the future. For example, in my new tutoring work I find myself already worrying about the summer. Will I work then and how will I work with my kids home for the summer? I find myself thinking about other people not thinking I am good enough at what I do. Will the kids I tutor enjoy my teaching style?

And the past, I think about mistakes I have made. I let my ego tell me how unworthy I am because I have yelled at my kids or because I don’t exercise regularly “like I used to.”  I still beat myself up over my ever-present mocha addiction.

I forget that life changes all of the time. I forget to tell myself, nothing is permanent, everything changes.  If I was the same as I “used to be” I wouldn’t be the me I am now.

In reminiscing about the present moment, I remembered a book I read a year ago called Radiance: Experiencing Divine Presence by Gina Lake.

She says that one of the reasons I turn away from the present moment is that I am programmed, by my mind or ego, to reject life as it is. If I live in my ego, I will always want things to be different than they are.

I see a perfect example of this theory when my son decides that his shot will be great and looks ahead of him to see where the ball is going rather than at the actual ball he needed to see first to get to the “great” part.

Lake says, “The ego would rather give attention to its fantasies, dreams, memories, opinions, judgments, and even fears than to the actual reality of any moment, which in addition to being imperfect (from the ego’s point of view), is impossible to control or predict.”

What that means to me is that even if my son is present, he might still have a crappy shot. But that is also part of being there – accepting the moment just as it is.

Lake says, “Accepting whatever is happening drops you into Essence and into a state of happiness, peace, and contentment.”

But my ego often gets bored with this content state and might just try to find a problem to solve by creating a problem to solve. And my son might try that tactic too. He might even take another turn hitting and still tell me to watch his great shot. And rather than trying to solve the problem by being in and accepting the moment, he might try and back away from the ball more – maybe he was too close to it. Or maybe it is the ball! That’s it. There is an “X” drawn on the ball. If that is pointed down, then the hit will be great.

My son did become more present in his game, and as he did this and wasn’t as concerned with the shot he was going to hit, his ball sailed much further down the beach. By the time he tired of his game, he was hitting like a mini-pro (through a mother’s eyes anyway).

For me, the hardest part about using this concept of staying present is the actual being present or staying present part.

Lake explains a good way to stay in the present moment. She says, “to stay there [in the moment], you have to keep accepting what’s happening, and that can be challenging because the mind comes into nearly every moment with a reason to leave it. You must say no to the mind again and again before its hold it loosened.”

My favorite advice or direction on how to stay present comes from the book, Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth (by the way, I said Women Food and God, not Eat Pray Love).

Roth says of the present moment, a thousand times a day you leave and a thousand times a day you come back.

When I read this, I thought it was the perfect way to explain how the mind works. I leave, I catch myself thinking about what I said to someone yesterday, I come back, I leave, I remember that I am snack mom at school next week (even though I have a reminder already set on my calendar), I come back.

The more I come back, according to Lake, the more I can stay. The longer I stay, the happier I am. The happier I am, the more I want to stay – the more I want to practice staying. The more I practice staying, the more I stay. I stay right here, right now.

I had the cover drawn as part of my belief that if you want a book to come to life, have the cover done first. It makes it more real. Even so, my best laid plans were derailed by Life. In the time just after Tracy and I started the book I got married, built a house and started having children. The book was shelved and Life took over.

Nine years later, one night at mediation, after I had been thinking, how can I make money?, I had a realization. I needed to pick that book up again. It was called Surviving Braces and it wasn’t just a cookbook, it was an entire guide to wearing braces.

I immediately called Tracy and told her I was ready to get our book done. I designed a new cover and we had that manuscript written in four months. I look back now and I can’t imagine how I got it done. My kids were out of school for the summer. I had just lost my nanny, so my house suddenly seemed much larger with all of the housework I would be now be doing myself.

But the book was my refuge. I woke at 3 a.m. many mornings, worked on it and went back to bed. I dreamed about the book. In my mind this was a ticket to income. I could make this happen.

We finished the book and I worked with a printer on getting 500 copies. We had pre-sold 300, so things were looking good.

We have had minimal success with the book, especially on Amazon, but I envisioned having a steady stream of income from it (selling it to every orthodontist in town) – and that has not been the case. I fully thought out the book, but I didn’t think nearly as much about selling it. In my mind, that part just happened magically.

It wasn’t hard to let go of the delusion of big book-money. Looking back, I guess my real dream was the writing of the book. I have had the fancy of being an author most of my life.

I might not have thought much about the sales of the book, but I did think about the fact that I did not achieve one of my main goals from writing it – to make money, an income of my very own.

So in meditations I just put it out there: I want a “job” with the following qualifications – I want to make good money, I want to help people, I want to do something I can be passionate about, and most importantly, I want to have a flexible schedule so that I am able to still be around for my children. Oh, and no office job please – I want meaning here.

In the meantime, I considered and even did mock ups, for a dental newsletter. Back in my 20s I had a company called Newsletters, Etc. where I wrote, designed and mailed newsletters for dentists to send to their patients. I had quite a few dentists I did this for and I did it for a couple of years. I really loved doing it, but the money was not there. When my mentor and company owner from my previous job called me and said she had a client for me if I wanted the job, I took it and ran. I needed more stability and she was offering me a pot of gold at a really good time to end the newsletter rainbow.

So when I was in meditation another Saturday night and I asked for direction, I thought about that newsletter from my past, ToothTalk, and what came to mind was to do an email version. With the Internet, the newsletter business would be so much cheaper!

I did a couple of designs, I grabbed a gmail account, ToothTalk themed, and went to thinking about how I could get dentists on board. I even found my old ToothTalk articles and set about updating them to be more current.

But I was kind of broke and I didn’t know how I would get the word out. And I sent it to one dentist that acted interested but when he got my design he said he wasn’t up for it. So I choked. I thought maybe it was the design and maybe my articles just weren’t that good anymore. Who knows, but I tooth-talked myself right out of pursuing my newsletter idea to any further extent.

I met with a lady that owns a marketing company to see if I could pick up some writing work. I applied to be editor for a startup magazine. Nothing was working out.

Then one day last summer, I took the kids to the park and sat down. There was a girl (or I guess I should face it, a woman my age) sitting on the same stone ledge watching her kids play. Turns out, our kids are the same age. I had the book Outliers with me, as if I was actually going to read at the park, and we talked about the book. She was in a book club. I liked her from the get-go.

Jesse, my daughter, ran over and asked me a question. Jesse has trouble pronouncing her Ls and Rs. She can’t or doesn’t say them. Kind of like Elmer Fudd. Jesse says, Can I have a Wowwy Pop, pwease? And “What in the Wood? Instead of World. Or, “That gull is nice.” Instead of girl.

The lady told me if I wanted to know what that is causing Jesse to not pronounce her words she could tell me. “Oh yes, I would love to know,” I said.

“It’s a lateral lisp.”

This basically means Jesse will probably need speech therapy to train her tongue to fall in the correct place to pronounce her Ls and Rs in the future.

The reason she knew this is because she’s a speech pathologist. My journalistic side came out and I started to question her more about her career. She told me all kinds of things that speech pathologists do, including help stroke survivors restore speech. It’s not all about children.

And, she told me more about how to help Jesse as well. She emailed me, from her phone, a computer game that might help and told me some things I could do with Jesse.

The kids played and it was time to go, so we parted ways. When I got home, I saw her email come through on the computer and I made, for me, a bold move. I emailed her and asked if she would like to get together some time for coffee.

She emailed me back and said, “Sure.”

But it took a while. Things came up, as they do when you have two small children. Eventually, we met at McDonald’s for breakfast. It was summer and we had about three weeks until school started. The kids played on the indoor play-set while she and I had breakfast and talked.

After I met her in the park, I started thinking, I might like to be a speech pathologist too. How rewarding. And, she seemed to be able to “do it all.” Work, have two children the same age as mine, and keep life together. This was promising.

But as I looked into what it takes to be a speech pathologist, I realized it was much more of a “do-over” for me than I could handle. Oh well.

So I met her at McDonald’s and we chatted more about her job. Turns out, she not only practices in schools, she has a company where she has other speech pathologists working for her and she sends them out on jobs at schools.

Then she said, “I’m looking for an Orton Gillingham tutor. I get requests for it all the time. If you will get trained in that, I can get you work.”

And like that that (snap of the fingers) my life changed.

Orton Gillingham? What’s that? It’s a method of teaching children who are dyslexic to read and retain information better.

I told her, “OK. I’ll check into that when I get home.”

I went home and set my new life in motion. I researched and I was fascinated from the beginning. I ordered a book about dyslexia. I thought about a mom from my kids’ previous school who just so happened to have been a tutor for special needs kids before becoming a full time mom.

I called her and asked what she thought about this method. She said, “I used some Orton, but my best friend took a class and loved it. She is an Orton tutor now.” And, she told me exactly where to go to get the training.

I found the course. It is one day a week for the entire school year. Just two in-class hours and the rest of the work I do from home. I signed up and have been doing this all year, since the beginning of my own kids’ school year. And I will be taking the class until the school-year ends.

That could be where this ends, but it isn’t. The girl-lady from the park emailed me half way through the class and asked when I would be ready to start tutoring. I asked her to meet with me so I could show her where I am in my studies. And we agreed that with what I have learned so far, combined with my writing and journalism experience, I could help some kids now.

I have been working for three weeks.

I don’t regret trying hard to find what was right for me – I believe God helps those who help themselves. But I have to admit, in the end, what I wanted found me rather than me finding it. I have a feeling I could have looked under every rock in front of me, but it wasn’t a rock I was looking for in the first place. It was a piece of wood, lying right next to the rock.

Under that piece of wood was a career with exactly the requirements I asked for:  the money is good and gets better the longer I do it, it’s a great chance to help people, I have a true passion for words, I love them and Orton is word and word-rule centered.  And most importantly, the schedule is flexible so that I am able to still be around for my children. Oh, and I’m feeling like I get to see so many different types of people and kids there is more meaning in what I am doing than I could have imagined for myself.

And isn’t it a worthwhile prayer: God, please use me for something greater than I could ever imagine for myself. I got that one from Oprah and I use it often and I mean it when I say it.

I was inspired to write today because of something I read in a book called LovingKindness, by Sharon Salzberg.

She says, “We are not urged to make thought spring from the love born out of concern for all beings. Rather, we are advised to let it spring from the love that is our true nature.”

She actually said this about thinking, not being. But that statement made me think about how I had been trying to make something happen and when I least expected it, in a quiet moment at the park, my path found me and I let it happen. My true nature was exposed, my love of words and my desire to help others.

My new career path is not easy. One kid has pretty much told everyone he hates me (to my credit, he hates everyone) and yesterday a girl left our session, which was outdoors at her house, and went under the deck, hid and would not speak to me anymore. Session over.

Through these challenges and because I feel like I have been led down this path, my take on life is changing, becoming less stressed and I am able to be more accepting of myself.

Yesterday my tire went flat on the way to a meeting about a child. I missed the meeting. And normally I would be stressed and worried. Part of me wanted to take a picture of the tire and send it to the lady I work for, to make sure she knew I really did have a flat, but I didn’t. I decided to trust that I am trustworthy. I decided to believe myself and to believe in myself.

I don’t know how long the new career will last. I feel like it entered my life for a reason and when I have learned what I am supposed to, helped the children I am supposed to help and I have been used until I’m all used up, I will move on. I might be 100 when that happens, I might be 41.

But today, I am going to accept that this is where I am supposed to be and the children that enter my life are the ones I am supposed to help. I trust that this direction was hand-picked just for me. I am that special, that helpful and that worthy. Just because, I am.

I’ve just returned from my local metaphysical bookstore and meditation refuge, Phoenix and Dragon. Tonight was Don Simmons’s annual Tea Ceremony meditation. This is the third that I have attended. There have been seven previous, eight including tonight.

I love the tea ceremony for its combination of ceremony and whimsy. Don really knows how to make this tradition light-hearted and official at the same time.

“Don’t keep this towel in a file. Use it. Make it profane,” he says.

After wiping our hands on our tea towel, Don explains The Way of Tea. “This meeting is one time, one meeting,” Don explains. “We may have more tea ceremonies, but we will never have one exactly like this one in this moment.” In Japanese it is “ichi-go, ichi-e,” appreciating the sacredness of every moment.

We fold our tea towels into little pillow-like squares and really feel the moment. Then Don explains a philosophy to help understand the tea ceremony as sacred, a saying Chop Wood, Carry Water, Drink Tea.

Don explains on his Facbook Page, The Mystic Path, “Chop Wood, Carry Water, Drink tea is a philosophy of charity, service and inclusiveness. Chopping wood, a yang or masculine energy, is the beginning action of transformation (fire) for all to experience. Carrying water is the yin or feminine action reflecting the “bringing of life” to others. Drinking Tea is the balance of work and service – bringing pleasure and rejuvenation to self and others.”n you drink Tea, contemplate the Balance of your life and enjoy yourself and friends.

In 200 B.C. a Han Dynasty Emperor ruled that when referring to tea, a special written character must be used illustrating wooden branches, grass, and a man between the two. This written character, also pronounced “ch’a” symbolized the way tea brought humankind into balance with nature for the Chinese culture.

Before beginning the making of the tea, food is served. In tea ceremonies in ancient times, the people coming to the ceremony would have travelled far to get there. In addition to being thirsty, they would have been hungry. I didn’t eat much myself before going, so when Don exposed his plate of cookies, I was happy to be the first to be offered one.

It feels a little funny sitting there in a room full of adults eating cookies mindfully, but that’s what we do. Then Don sits down and, like a kid, eats his own cookie with a gleam in his eye.

There is a way to drink the tea in a tea ceremony. Hold tea in right hand, left hand is under the cup. Take a breath. Exhale. Bring tea cup up, inhale the tea’s aroma. Exhale. Bring tea cup up, take a sip, savor, swallow. Start the process over. And if you don’t get that all perfectly “correct” then wabi sabi at you again. And the only real rule there is: do this ritual mindfully and you are doing it “right.”

I was reminded to be mindful of the energy I bring to the room when Don talked of a friend he has that says he never goes to a party unless he can bring something positive to the room. I like that philosophy for just entering a room on an ordinary day.

I was given tools for my year coming up. Don, who is adept at numerology, explains, 2011 was a year of stability and stability can often mean stagnation. 2012 represents the number five. Five is the number for forward motion, change, growth, manifestation, and freedom. This year will be on the go – watching the manifestation of actions in life.

Don made sure to remind us of the willingness to let things happen, to see the beauty in the imperfections of life. Sometimes when things do not go exactly as I plan, I remember that the Universe might have plans much larger than I can imagine for myself.

In Positive Energy, by Judith Orloff, she dedicates a portion of her Seventh Prescription to the “Sacredness of laughter.” One of her accounts reminds me how a serious moment can turn into something more if I am only able to see the humor. Orloff tells a story about how a friend’s grandmother with Alzheimer ate tulips that were on the table instead of the food. She writes, “…out of a mix of respect and the utter goofiness of the moment, the friend began eating tulips too.” 

So, in honor of my third tea ceremony, today I go into my world seeking a path to my highest good, as my most useful self, but I am also out there making sure I see what’s amusing about it. Today, I trust the process of life.

I hate it when I do something I think is stupid, embarrassing may be a better word. I recently did something I’m not happy with myself about. I woke up one morning feeling like I was being “guided” to write a friend. I have not seen this friend in years – probably 20 or more. But, like so many people, through Facebook I have been able to maintain contact with her.

I have kept up with her progress through a support service for people called CareBridge.org. It’s a kind of blog for friends, family and the patients themselves to keep everyone abreast of what is going when a loved one is ill. This is the second CareBridge page I have followed and I cannot express how touching the posts are. First, my friend and hair stylist, Andrea, kept one for her son’s journey through leukemia. Her writing blows me away.

And, while I might have written my friend to try and give her guidance, it was she who did the guiding in the end. And if she ever reads this, I hope she can forgive me and know that my intentions were in the right place.

And with that, here I come 2012 – I am ready to look in the mirror. I am ready to give myself over to the person I am meant to be, and I will get there by concentrating on my own self-improvement rather than looking to improve those around me.

Last Thursday, I picked my kids up early from school. We had places to go and people to see. Mainly, my mom, but we are lucky enough much more of the family were joining us. I went into the office at the school and told the lady at the front desk, a wonderful woman whom many people depend on, that I needed to get Nate and Jesse out of school. She asked if they had appointments. 
 

“Really?” She says in a surprised voice with her eyebrows lifting.

And do you know what the lady at the front said (and she does not know my spiritual disposition)? She said, “I feel like I am supposed to see you today. I woke up this morning feeling like I want to do something and I asked God, ‘God, what should I do. I think I am too old for school and I don’t know what I can do.’”  

And front desk lady says, “I think you are right, I just got chills talking to you.”

Chills!

I said, “I got chills too. That means angels are here talking through us.”

Isn’t it funny how one conversation can lead to one little action? What if she looks up information and decides she might want to be a nurse. She might call a school and decide the schedule is doable and affordable for her. She might even do it – become a nurse. Suddenly, she’s not so old after all.

It’s like six degrees of separation in a way. Six Degrees of Separation is where everyone knows each other by tracing backwards six people and figuring out they know each other through someone else. Which, by the way, since Facebook, Six Degrees has now been lowered to Four Degrees, according to the show Sunday Morning on CBS (love that show).

Maybe if we thought about it, we could trace back six thoughts ago to figure out the person who helped lead to an action we took. Maybe it would be good and maybe it would be bad actions. Who knows. But if we traced back far enough, could we find out who helped shape the major decisions?

In a book called Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, he says no successful person gets where they are without help in some form. The major Outliers, like Bill Gates, had tons of help, mainly from a parent’s group at his school, where there was a computer lab funded by this group, one of the few existing mainframe computers at the time, then a job offer which put him night and day on computers well ahead of the rest of the world. By the time we might have just be hearing of a computer, he was already well versed in the way they worked inside and out.

I love this. I love that my mom is an inspiration and that doing something for herself helps others do something for themselves and then that helps the next person succeed. I love how each person’s feat builds upon the other. It makes it so much easier to look at someone compassionately and know that I should share with them.

Now my mom is a R.N. And she may never have made that decision if it wasn’t for Cindy, the Ophthalmologist.

And, today I will do something for me and hope that it helps someone else.

Part I – Becoming Aware 

So, this is getting long, and I’m getting tired. It’s my nap time. The time I take almost daily before I pick the kids up from school. Time to clear my mind, relax and doze off. I plan to visualize my heart center, green and swirling, opening up. I plan to use this time to find my highest good so that for the rest of the day, hopefully, I will be a positive force in the lives of those around me.

Source: Positive Energy, 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress & Fear into Vibrance, Strength & Love, by Judith Orloff, M.D. Exerpts from Chapter 8, pages 263-267